Exchange @ Science Park for Life Sciences Community

“Exchange @ Science Park” is an informal event which aims to provide a platform for the community to come together for idea exchange. The 1st Exchange @ Science Park invited Mr. Mikael Øerum, a 30-year veteran in biotechnology and finance sector, as our speaker for the life sciences community on 29 July 2008.

CEO of HKSTP gave an introduction speech and explained the role of science park in biotechnology.

I would like to summarize the content of Mr. Mikael Øerum speech as below.

Mr. Mikael Øerum’s topic was “Building a Biotech Cluster in the Pearl River Delta Region”.
He showed the model of “Medicon Valley” (MV) which is a large Bio-cluster in Europe. And he compared the biomedical research among UK, MV, HK & CN (China).

He told about how to "Building a Biotech Cluster":

Mr. Mikael Øerum showed eight key areas of commercial Interest:
1. Technology of facilitate drug discovery
2. Selected new therapeutics
3. Technology to increase speed or reduce risk in drug development
4. New antibiotics
5. Disruptive technology in medical device and diagnostics
6. Technology in important areas of medical device and diagnostics
7. Technology to reduce costs of manufacturing of biologics
8. Technology to integrate western & Chinese traditional medicine

Finally, he shared seven lessons for building a Bio-cluster
1. High class Universities are keys to provide excellent research and Pool of talent
2. Global Business perspective should drive patenting strategy at the universities and companies
3. Efficient and market driven tech transfer from Universities to Industry is mandatory for growth
4. Hospital network with well established patient records is required for fast recruitment
5. Domestic risk willing capital for seed & follow-up investments in new Biotech ventures are needed.
6. CRO’s, Patent attorneys, consultants etc. will emerge as a result of the cluster building
7. An organizing capacity to take initiative and coordinate their implementation is needed.

After the seminar, it could be concluded that Bio-cluster was led by universities, industries and government related bodies.